There’s nothing like a shot of confidence to get a team playing well. All year I have felt that as a team we were very close to performing well. It was just a matter of time before we started to believe in ourselves. As is always the case there has been plenty of advice from different people as to why this years Hawk’s team are not winning as many games on the scoreboard as previous as other teams in recent years. Reasons have stemmed from lacking leadership to poor coaching. While I am sure all reasons have certain validity to them, it has been a group working hard to right their wrongs.

I for one certainly put my hand up and say that have been spoilt in recent years as a coach with the leadership within the group and I haven’t performed well enough as a coach at times. A couple of weeks I gave the team an exercise to do. I asked the following three questions:

1. What do we need to keep doing?
2. What do we need to stop doing?
3. What do we need to start doing?

I first of all asked this in a group situation where I had each player write down three responses to each question. We then collated the answers to come up with some ideas to help us improve. I then had the group do the same exercise of each individual in the team (coach included). This time the players only had to write one response to each person for each question. This is a very good task but can also be very detrimental as not everybody is able to deal with the prospect of reading something they may not want to face. I believe this was the start of the group starting to believe in itself as we stood up and faced the realities of our performances. This enabled us to grow both as a team and individuals.

In the last two weeks I have seen the team start to grow and different players start to improve their play. While we have not won on the scoreboard as much as we would all like I believe we have started to win in other areas, which will eventually help us win on the scoreboard. This past weekend showed the growth of the group losing to Wellington by a point and then going to Christchurch and beating the Cougars without import Chuck Bailey who was to ill to make the trip. The growth of the team was enormous and the most pleasing thing was the fact that when the Cougars attempted to up the ante and become very physical as Wellington had done the night before we were able to answer the questions put to us and continue on with a win.

As one of the players said to me after the game, it is amazing to watch how much more confidence we are playing with compared to just two weeks ago. At our last home game I am sure most people would have thought that this Hawks team could not do well and was possibly in danger of missing the play offs altogether. I will admit I was worried about that myself. But the one thing this group has continued to do is put in the work in training and it was only a couple of wins away from gaining the confidence we needed to have a chance at competing for the Championship. We are starting to peak at the right time and in play off basketball up until to the Grand Final it is sudden death so anything can happen. It often is important to be playing well at this time and we are very close to that. We have a week to get it right and then it’s money time.

With energy

Shawn Dennis
Head Coach
0800 Easy LPG Hawks